Physics
Scientific paper
May 2001
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2001agusm...p41b11h&link_type=abstract
American Geophysical Union, Spring Meeting 2001, abstract #P41B-11
Physics
5704 Atmospheres--Composition And Chemistry, 5705 Atmospheres--Evolution, 5707 Atmospheres--Structure And Dynamics, 5749 Origin And Evolution, 5780 Tori And Exospheres
Scientific paper
The earliest atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are thought to have been hotter, have stronger winds and rotate faster than atmospheres of today. Since these primitive atmospheres were weakly bound, they evolved rapidly because atmospheric escape was very strong, often referred to as "blowoff." Such escape has been treated as hydrodynamic, transonic flow, similar to solar wind flow dynamics. However, in many cases the outward flow is hydrodynamic at low altitudes only to become collisionless at higher altitudes, well before sonic speeds are ever attained. Recent models dealing with such transition from fluid to kinetic flow have applied the Jeans escape flux at the exobase. This approach has lead to escape rates that are too low due to the fact that thermospheric winds and planetary rotation increase escape fluxes considerably over the corresponding Jeans fluxes (1). In particular, for a given density and temperature at the exobase, the escape flux increases as the wind speed and/or the rotation rate increase. Also, for a given wind speed and rotation rate, the escape flux enhancement over the Jeans flux increases as the mass of an escaping constituent increases, an important factor in isotope fractionation, especially the enrichment of deuterium on Mars. Accounting for a range of possible temperatures, thermospheric wind speeds and planetary rotation rates in the primitive atmospheres of the terrestrial planets, estimates are made of light constituent escape flux increases over the corresponding Jeans fluxes. (1) Hartle, R. E. and H. G. Mayr, J. Geophys. Res., 81, 1207, 1976.
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